I used to get that a lot over the years. Especially as time and my improbable “career pattern” went on. After a period in the day allotted to toil and effort, I would find myself drawn, through serious imprinting by seniors, peers and those wiser than I over the years, to places known to cater to the likes of me and to place beverages of various nature, but universally seeming to contain some essence of ethanol, in front of me. Expecting me to drink them and all.

As said above, given that these establishments were known as places where folks of my ilk were known to gather, and given that statistically, we are fewer in number than we seem (many go on to actual, gainful employment, and real lives, rather than continue to keep the highly over-rated “adulthood” at bay, and thus, fall by the wayside) I would, with somewhat puzzling regularity, come face-to-face (or elbow-to-elbow) with a distantly remembered face. That being the problem with time, as it marches on, and we would turn, look at each other, and one of us would utter the words “don’t I know you?”

That query, of course, elicits the firing of synapses at an astonishingly rapid rate as we quickly work through the “question tree:” A) Do I know this person? B) Is that a i) Good Thing or ii) Bad Thing? C) Do I owe him money? The last question, if answered in the affirmative, immediately gives you the default verbal response of “no, I don’t think we’ve ever met.” But if you do recall him or her, and it hasn’t prompted the “fight-or-flight” reflex, the ritual progresses through the when, where and “so what have you been up to since [insert place/ship/air wing HERE]?”

What I found puzzling, and my immediate companions at that moment always found most amusing at my expense, was the way-too-frequent exclamation that seemingly always started with “wow, I’d heard you were…” Now the ending was always something that seemed, well, a tad untoward. “Court-Martialed,” “in hack,” “left the Service in disgrace,” “caught at high noon, on the Chapel steps with…” and on more occasions than I can count, apparently my early demise from this life had been repeatedly presumed, although I for one cannot understand why thus would be so.

Was it the fact that I spend a goodly portion of the aforesaid improbable career flying in an aircraft whose original Navy designation that one time was said to stand for “All 3 Dead?” http://www.a3skywarrior.com/ That my next aircraft had developed a previously unforeseen propensity to have the wings depart the airframe at the worst possible moment? http://www.intruderassociation.org/ Or was it somehow the result of assumptions about my personal character, villainously spread by malcontents and know-nothings? Perhaps the answer lays in some dark mix of the above.

But, given that my mantra since the very first days a-growing up around the true ancestral home of Naval Avaition http://www.cnic.navy.mil/Coronado/About/Installations/NavalAirStationNorthIsland/index.htm was always “I’d rather be lucky than good,” I find myself not only still about but also succumbing to XBradTC’s repeatedly “tossing the keys” to this fine establishment on my desktop. A gauntlet oft thrown is one that eventually is picked up, and I think we’ll all rue that decision, in one form or another.

But to salve your patience this fine spring day, I come bearing gifts! 🙂 For those with greater talent than I (e.g. most of the planetary population) used their talents to put together a rather nice video about my last Navy flying club, er, squadron. Eventually, it found its way, as most things like this seem to, onto YouTube. So without further ado, and with the promise, no matter how bleak the prospect, that “I’ll be back,” let this conclude my first solo flight into the blogosphere. Enjoy, and